


This Isn't Goodbye

by allthebeautifulthings9828



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Broken Dean, Brother Feels, Castiel Feels, Castiel Loves Dean, Castiel in the Bunker, Castiel's Grace, Castiel's Heaven, Castiel's Loss of Grace, Comfort/Angst, Courage, Crying Castiel, Crying Dean, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dean Feels, Dean Loves Castiel, Dean Realizes His Feelings For Castiel, Declarations Of Love, Dying Castiel, Feels, Fighter Dean, First Kiss, Good Brother Sam Winchester, Grieving Dean, Heaven, Heaven is Closed, Heavy Angst, Kissing, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Demon Dean, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester, Sick Castiel, True Love, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 16:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2354621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebeautifulthings9828/pseuds/allthebeautifulthings9828
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After everything--the blood, the murder, the lies, the betrayal--Dean's cure from the demonic arrived just as Castiel lay in the midst of his last days. Maybe it was punishment for the countless disgusting acts he committed while under Crowley's thumb. He'd taken lives and caused insurmountable pain. Now he'd have to watch his best friend die a slow and painful death. He'd have to count the minutes for the rest of his life without Castiel. As he grapples with the deathbed vigil, a lingering confession of deeper, truer feelings reinvigorates Dean's will to fight. This is his last chance to be a hero and save Castiel's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Isn't Goodbye

After everything--the blood, the murder, the lies, the betrayal--Dean's cure from the demonic arrived just as Castiel lay in the midst of his last days. It was the sort of blow that he hasn't felt since he was a four-year-old boy facing a lifetime without his mother. A life returned to him held no appeal once his eyes fell on the pale, weak shape cocooned in his own bed. Sam had given Castiel the memory foam mattress Dean bought when they first moved into the bunker--when living and breathing didn't hurt so bad.

Maybe it was Dean's punishment for the countless disgusting acts he committed while under Crowley's thumb. He'd taken lives and caused insurmountable pain. Now he'd have to watch his best friend die a slow and painful death. He'd have to count the minutes for the rest of his life without Castiel.

His chest constricted, standing there at the end of the bed watching the dying angel hover at Heaven's threshold. He should have relished in human sensations surging through his body again, but all he felt was the stalking threat of a crippling void.

It just wasn't worth it anymore. Simply existing hurt like betrayal.

"Talk to him," urged Sam, rising from a bedside chair to Dean's side. "He knows who's here and who's talking."

"He won't wanna hear from me." Dean's voice trembled on the edge of a whisper, never looking away from the body nestled in his bed. "Everything I did, Sammy. Neither of you should even look at me. I kill everything I touch. Just look at him."

"None of that matters now," Sam pressed. "He wants you. That's all."

That idea refused to compute in Dean's mind. "Why?" He choked out the words in a broken whisper and, feeling his resolve give way, left the room.

Dean bolted down the hall toward the curving iron stairwell but stumbled as tears blinded his vision. Burning salty pain seared his eyes as he leaned over the railing. Good. He deserved the pain. Crushing weight threatened to choke the life out of his chest and he accepted that pain too. Over the years, he knew he'd get used to pain and suffering as he did penance for turning his back on humanity and everything he loved for the easy selfishness and decadence of Hell. Fists turned white as he clutched the railing and he briefly considered flinging himself over the side. The only thing that stopped him was a return trip back to the fire pit without ever having a chance at redemption to reach Heaven to see Castiel again. Desperation clawed at his ribcage from the inside as if his soul actually rejected the idea of existence without the angel being a quick prayer or phone call away. Dean's head hung over the stairwell and he heard himself nearly howling in tearful anguish.

Familiar hands reached over the back of his shoulders and then he found himself clapped in a bear hug with his brother. Sam said nothing but let his presence do the talking just as he had when Dean left Castiel behind in Purgatory.

"I can't do this again," choked Dean. Somewhere his thoughts knew it was unlike him to howl and carry on with grief but it flowed from his throat like a dam broke.

"Talk to him," Sam urged again, his voice patient and soothing. "Don't let him go without saying what you need to say. Don't live with the regret I haul around every day about Jess." The fact that Sam effortlessly linked Dean's grief to the love of his life nailed the coffin shut. He'd known all along what Dean felt for the angel even if Dean didn't know it himself. "Go," Sam said quietly. "I'll give you time alone. Just ... be with him, Dean."

Reluctantly, Dean agreed. He shuffled back down the hall like his legs dragged through swamp water. The dim room enveloped him in isolation the moment he felt the door latch closed behind him, and he didn't have the slightest idea of what to do. Castiel's face rested so peacefully on Dean's pillow that he didn't look sick. He tricked Dean's mind into thinking there wasn't anything wrong. The angel could get better. He was too strong, too powerful to die there in Dean's bed after everything they'd been through. That was the very angel that swallowed millions of souls, exploded, and lived to tell the tale, after all. It was bullshit--BULLSHIT!--to think he'd die quietly, slipping away from the world like water bleeding from a cracked vase. But the flare of defiance collapsed under the weight of Castiel's wet lungs crackling under the blanket.

A horrible, defeated breath escaped Dean's body, feeling himself shrink there at the end of the bed, weighed down by the finality of the last days. He slinked around to the angel's bedside and touched the flank of an exposed neck just to remind himself that it wasn't a nightmare after all.

"Hey, Cas," he said wearily.

But, receiving no response, no sign of recognition, the weight of finality shoved Dean into the floor all the more. He chewed his lip and knew he wasn't the guy to make big deathbed speeches but something--Castiel needed something to know he wasn't alone in the end.

Dean scooted onto the edge of the bed, not really knowing what he was doing, but the warmth of Castiel's body invited him in closer. Curling around the angel, Dean's arm draped over the steady rise and fall of his chest and naturally fell into stroking his jaw under a languid thumb. His face came to rest in the crook of Castiel's neck and, letting his eyes fall closed, breathed the clean, earthy scent edged by something sweet. A knee pulled up over the angel's legs. Dean needed to be close and offer his own body heat if it made Castiel more comfortable.

Instead, his weight bound up around Castiel roused him from that dreary land between consciousness and the great beyond. His gaunt, stubbled face turned toward Dean's and sluggish hands curled over the mass of Dean's arm. The faintest ghost of a smile suggested that he recognized the presence. Not only recognized it but clutched the arm with tenacity so intrinsic to who he became over the years.

"Hello, Dean. I knew you'd find your way home," Castiel whispered weakly.

A thousand words choked the passage of Dean's throat. He remained silent. What could he say? How could he make it better? Impossible.

"I've been lying here thinking of my Heaven," he continued so quietly that Dean wouldn't have heard him if they weren't wound up together in bed.

"Heaven's closed," Dean replied sadly.

"No, I hear them. My brothers and sisters. Some know a way to send us home when we die." The way he said it almost sounded like a rejoicing whisper. "I'll be taken care of when this grace ceases to burn. I'm going to my Heaven."

Selfishly, Dean lightly squeezed Castiel as if he could keep the angel with him by the physical power of his immense strength. He didn't want to hear that shit. He didn't want Castiel to give up, to accept death so easily, not when Dean just began to understand who he was and what he wanted. But to argue seemed cruel at that point. He swallowed back admonishments and encouragement to keep fighting in favor of the silence that allowed the angel to keep talking. Soaking in his voice, faint as it was, seemed just as selfish but Dean was the one sentenced to life alone.

"The only thing," he said, swallowing with great effort, "the only thing to make my Heaven worthwhile is you, Dean. I build places in my mind but you're always there. Sometimes it's a sprawling English garden and I walk along the paths enjoying the sun on my face, and then I see you digging holes for new trees. You wave at me like we haven't seen each other in centuries. Other times, it's cliffs overlooking the ocean. Maine, or perhaps Ireland, where the sea isn't so tame. Nature is raw in those places, Dean. You should see them. But there you are, leaving a little house with a dog trotting ahead of you and you're coming to greet me on the cliffs. No matter how beautiful my Heaven is or how peaceful I feel, it never compares to seeing you there too. I realized, lying here a while ago, that my Heaven isn't a place or a scene from the earthly travels I've had. It's you."

Dean's face shifted on their shared pillow and cold wetness coated his cheek. Listening to Castiel describe Heaven brought silent, insistent tears spilling from his eyes--something he loathed before but now saw as a true hallmark of humanity. He remained still and quiet, more of uncertainty in his ability to say something meaningful. A tender touch along Castiel's jaw could not be mistaken for anything other than the touch of a lover. Confessing how he'd felt for years should have been done with thoughtful language, but Dean being Dean, relied on the instinct of physical expression.

The angel's chest pushed out a deep sigh beneath the weight of Dean's arm. Less hopeful and peaceful then, Castiel's mood shifted rapidly to something entirely more prickly and dark.

"Just rest," Dean offered quietly.

"I don't want to leave you," admitted Castiel, his whisper trembling with rarely seen but faint tears.

Dean jumped up, leaning on his elbow and peering down at that ashen, sickly face. His blue eyes lost their luster but he guessed the luster had disappeared long before Dean returned. The confession punched him in the gut but he labored on keeping his features still and calm for the sake of a sickbed. It came as a game-changer, unexpected to Dean, who crawled into that bed thinking Castiel was at peace with his approaching demise. A hand caressed his stubble and a thumb traced the outline of his lower lip, full but dry with the illness of dying grace. Not knowing what to say drove a silent wedge between them for a time, silent enough for the embers to fan into a blaze around Dean's restored soul again.

"I love you," Dean blurted at the worst moment--in his mind anyway.

The moisture glistening Castiel's eyes sprang from the corners as his lids squeezed shut. "I love you," he blurted right back through a shaky murmur.

Bending over him, Dean's gentle touch propelled Castiel's mouth to his and a hard, desperate kiss blended them into a single creature. Weak hands clung to Dean's shirt and his skin. It was more than a kiss between lovers soon to be separated beyond an irreversible chasm. Castiel clutched him as if hiding from the Grim Reaper. The bravery and poetry about Heaven had been a facade, an act for Dean's sake, or maybe he realized he wasn't ready to die after all when they met again.

"Cas," he said, breaking the kiss without finesse, "you're not ready to go."

"No." The angel shook his head, blue eyes blazing with the fearful awareness that time was running out for him.

It was all Dean needed to hear. Adrenalin burst through his bones, right down to the marrow, and reanimated his muscles with the urge to fight, to kill, and to keep his family in tact. He hadn't felt it in so long that he couldn't remember the last time such an overpowering electric sensation spurned him forward through panic into the fight.

"Stay alive. You hear me? You stay alive!" he nearly shouted, rising on his knees. "I'm gonna fix this, Cas, but you gotta fight too."

"Dean--"

The renewed hunter grabbed the dying angel's face and imprinted a second searing kiss on his mouth, hands gripping his face. Somewhere deep in his lost sense of hope, he imagined filling Castiel with his own breath and sense of life just to keep him going another few days. When he broke their kiss, he studied Castiel's face for any sign of recognition or his own urge to fight.

"I'm here." Two words came as a promise from Castiel's lips.

A sharp nod and Dean vaulted off the bed for the door in a single leap. He didn't dare look back, not wanting his last image of Castiel to be a weakened, broken creature dying in his bed. Instead, he held onto the echoing voice telling him, "I'm here," with such weary but determined eyes. Grabbing his jacket and car keys, Dean jetted down the curving stairwell.

Sam appeared in the library doorway and gripped the wall, brows etched at deeply concerned angles. "Where are you going?"

"To fix Cas!" he barked over his shoulder.

"What?"

Throwing a hard glance over his shoulder, Dean paused at the bunker door. "I was a demon for months, Sammy. I know where all the ins and outs are with Heaven, Hell, and places you've never conceived of in your life." He felt his eyes going stern and thought they could have gone black, but remembered his humanity in some vague way. "I'm gonna drag that fucker, Metatron, down here by his throat and he's gonna fix Cas or answer to me for it. I know exactly where his weaknesses are."

The fury reflected back to Dean through the honest intimidation in Sam's eyes. His younger brother nodded, possibly recognizing that Dean had gone past the point of no return.

"Go and sit with him," said Dean. "This isn't over. Not by a long shot. This isn't goodbye."


End file.
